Night Waves - Tzvetan Todorov/Artist Film-Makers/Artists in the Theatre

Philip Dodd talks to influential Paris-based philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, asking whether the position of the Enlightenment, as the philosophical cornerstone of modernity, needs defending from the assaults of a sometimes baffling and complex world. In his new book In Defence of the Enlightenment, Todorov argues that the core principles of the Enlightenment remain the tools necessary for navigation in a period of great uncertainty and muddled thinking. The UK Film Council recently announced that it was setting aside funds to tempt British visual artists behind the camera. Artists more usually seen on Turner Prize shortlists, like Sam Taylor-Wood and Steve McQueen, now have their names in the credits on the big screen. There seems to be an appetite for artist-made films. Lizzie Francke from the UK Film Council and film critic Nigel Floyd discuss whether visual artists can bring new ways of seeing and representing the world to film-making and if they should be supported to the detriment of seasoned directors whose skills have been honed over a lifetime's engagement in the art form? And as a new play about the life of the painter Mark Rothko opens, Susannah Clapp and art historian William Feaver discuss the theatrical fascination with the gloomy lives of artists and whether its possible to investigate questions of the aesthetics of visual art on the stage.